Scholars Push Equity And Inclusion Agenda At Nashville Math Conference
Image Credit: PME-NA.org
The Tennessee Conservative [By Jason Vaughn] –
Scholars in Nashville, Tennessee pushed a diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda meeting at a recent mathematics education conference.
Campus Reform published exclusive audio and images from the forum.
The conference was the 44th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, held from Nov. 17 – Nov. 20.
“Equity and Justice” was an entire section of the academic gathering.
Papers presented under this heading included “Leveraging Equity and Civic Empathy through Community-Based Mathematical Modeling,” “Discourses of Justice,” “Equitable Teaching Practices: Developing Emergent Bilinguals’ Positive Mathematical Identities,” and “Whiteness in Fearmongering Towards Mathematics Education Reform.”
“Equipartitioning” can be seen with an example on a presentation slide of a practice problem involving equitably distributing sandwiches brought on a field trip.
Other slides claimed that many mathematics standards “create toxic spaces for historically marginalized students and are violent toward them,” and quote “Queen Angela Davis.”
“Disrupting ‘traditional mathematics teaching and learning” is the topic of another slide.
One of the speakers delivered a presentation on her paper titled “Learning Trajectories Research Needs a Hard Re-Set” in which she argues that the “reset” can “only be achieved if our community adopts a critical stance that centers equity.”
Dr. Marrielle Myers, identified by Campus Reform, of Kennesaw State University stated that “…anytime I speak I am always engaging as a black girl. I’m engaging as a black girl who was talkative and social and energetic and as so was labeled disruptive and bossy and denied access to gifted programs in elementary school.”
“Ableism” was also a topic that Myers discussed in her presentation by posing a question to the attendees of the conference, asking “How can I create tasks that are not ableist? So when you look at a lot of the supersizing work, a lot of it is that oh, because everybody has two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet, and those are the types of things that are kind of built-in.”
Myers’ paper also speaks on how teachers and schools are under some of the most outrageous attacks in recent years.
It posits that red states such as Texas, Georgia, and Florida are continuing to “compete in a ‘race for the bottom’ as they seek to define and ban ‘divisive topics,’ create anti-woke laws, ban books, whitewash this nation’s history, and further marginalize students who identify as LGBTQIA+ by developing policies intended to destroy their safety.”
Later in the paper, teachers are victimized by claiming that they are exhausted from the attacks, and pandemics, and are being sued and humiliated.
Audio obtained from Campus Reform also recorded and unidentified speaker defining “equity” in education as “promoting critical social justice perspectives.”
The convention was held at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville and was sponsored by multiple departments of Middle Tennessee State University. These include the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, the Department of Mathematical Sciences, the College of Education, and the Mathematics and Science Education Doctoral Program.
About the Author: Jason Vaughn, Media Coordinator for The Tennessee Conservative ~ Jason previously worked for a legacy publishing company based in Crossville, TN in a variety of roles through his career. Most recently, he served as Deputy Director for their flagship publication. Prior, he was a freelance journalist writing articles that appeared in the Herald Citizen, the Crossville Chronicle and The Oracle among others. He graduated from Tennessee Technological University with a Bachelor’s in English-Journalism, with minors in Broadcast Journalism and History. Contact Jason at news@TennesseeConservativeNews.com
